Eects of non Markovianity and anisotropy on heavy quark dynamics in hot QCD medium

Abstract

In accordance with our current understanding of the fundamental forces governing the universe, there are four of them at work in nature, viz., the gravitational force, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. These forces play predominant roles at different length scales/energy scales. The associated theoretical frameworks for these forces provide us with invaluable insight for exploring the properties of the systems involving them. In the subatomic world, as we venture into the nucleons inside the nucleus of an atom, we encounter the elementary constituents of the matter known as quarks and gluons. These constituents obey the rules of strong nuclear force or strong interaction. The corresponding theoretical framework is the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) or the SU(3) color gauge theory. The QCD-based calculations on lattice predict that nuclear matter at high temperatures and densities dissolves into a deconfined state of quarks and gluons - called QGP, in which the quarks and gluonic degrees of freedom are effectively free beyond the confines of nucleonic volumes. The ability to attain such exceptionally high density and temperature on Earth for a small fraction of time has been made feasible through systematic and controlled experiments. This is achieved by colliding two heavy nuclei, such as Au-Au and Pb-Pb, at ultra-relativistic energies within the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) located at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The study of the quark-hadron phase transition in the laboratory holds paramount significance. According to the Big Bang model, the universe underwent such a transition just after a few microseconds of the Big Bang. The phase transition has profound implications not only for fundamental physics but also for exploring interesting aspects of astrophysics. newline